Monthly Archives: July 2016

Bike Highways

Over the last century or so, the world and its cities have spent trilions of dollars on automotive related highways. The interstate highway system in the US or the autobahns in Germany are example of engineering greatness – creating efficient and very convenient (for cars and trucks) roadway system.

Now we have examples of significant investment going into biking infrastructure in big metro areas.

Paris: investing approximately $164M to build a 28-30 mile highway for bicycles;

Atlanta: pledging to invest $1B over the next 25 years into biking and walking infrastructure in order to make the city more liveable

The Paris plan is being described in the article by CityLab and per that article hopefully it will get completed. From personal experience – Paris desperately needs the bicycles as the congestion in the city is pretty bad. I remember spending hours stuck in traffic trying to leave the city on the way to near by towns and then come back in the evening…

Beat Jet-lag

How to beat jet-lag? Well folks I firmly believe that biking is a cure to it all – yes, to JET-LAG…at least…Last night I flew into Austin (landed at ABIA around 9:40pm) after a 10-day trip to China. Mind you air travel has become easier over the years – a trip that used to take me 27-30 hours leaving home in Austin and getting to my destination in one of the major metro areas in China or doing the reverse, is now taking about 7-8 hours less. The reasons for that are many – one of them are the increase in direct flights between various points in the US and China leveraging the new fuel efficient Boeing 787-Dreamliner.

The plane is able to move a large number of passengers very efficiently and with relatively good comfort even in the dreaded “Economy” class…

As a result, I left Shanghai Pudong airport on a late afternoon flight bound for DFW and by 4:30pm on that same Saturday (Oh, the wonders of time zones — I left Shanghai and landed in Dallas what it seems only a few minutes later vs. the actual 14 hour flight). Even after American airlines managed to screw up my connecting flight to Austin due to the lack of a 3rd flight attendant, I was able to switch to another Austin bound flight at a later time and finally by 9:40pm landed in Austin.

My first action upon landing was to promise myself that Sunday morning will be taken by a bike ride on my Trek X-Caliber – the intent to beat jet lag as quickly as possible.

And that is what I did – I was on the bike on the trail by 8am – probably should have come out earlier given the heat and humidity of Texas at this time of the year but better late then never I guess; The trail seemed tougher than usual – why? because after 10-days of hopping from city to city, business meetings and all, I was out of shape!

Nevertheless I huffed and I puffed but I made the 11-mile trek in 1-hour and 15 minutes and along the way as usual, saw tons of interesting blooming flowers and the countless number of cactus…. The trek is tiring but the beauty of Texas nature is well worth the effort. After the urban jungle of Beijing, Shanghai, Shenzhen, Hangzhou and Suzhou – the Texas single track trail is a welcome escape…. Here are some more photos from the ride this morning…